Korean adoptee and EARS co-founder Oh Myo Kim spoke on BBC World about current issues surrounding Korean Adoption. (Aired: July 26, 2025)

Transcript

JULIAN WORRICKER: Since the 1950s, South Korea has sent more children abroad for adoption than any other country, with most sent to Western countries. The practice eventually led to an investigation led by the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began in 2022. Since then, 367 adoptees have filed petitions alleging fraudulent practices. Earlier this year in March, that investigation concluded, and the South Korean government admitted that it had committed numerous human rights violations over decades in a controversial program that sent at least 170,000 children and babies abroad for adoption, many of them following the Korean War in the early 1950s.

This is what Commission chairperson Park Sun Young had to say at a press conference:

PARK SUN YOUNG: South Korea plummeted to one of the poorest countries in the world, experiencing the Korean War
and actively promoted international adoption from an economic perspective.The word ‘active’ combined with ‘hurry hurry’ culture, led to inadequate legislation and a hasty administrative process. Even into the 1990s, when we had become well off, international adoption continued, and the children who were adopted felt the full brunt of the damage.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Well, now it’s been announced that the state and local governments will take full responsibility for the entire adoption process, meaning an end to the outsourcing of adoptions to private agencies. Well, joining us from Seoul is Professor Oh Myo Kim. She works to support South Korean adoptees searching for birth information, and was adopted from South Korea herself back in 1982. Professor, welcome to the program. Good morning from London.

OH MYO: Good morning. Hello.

JULIAN WORRICKER: It makes sense to start with your story because it puts everything else into context. So what happened to you?

OH MYO KIM: So I just want to correct a little bit. I was born in 1980. So I’m a little bit older than that. But I was adopted.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Right.

OH MYO KIM: But I was adopted in 1981 to New Jersey, actually northern New Jersey. And I had two adoptive brothers. My parents were Italian, Irish, American. My older brother was domestically white, adopted. My younger brother also adopted from Korea, but not my bio brother. And yeah, I mean, we grew up in New Jersey. My experience is, I think, a little bit different than a lot of Korean adoptees because I grew up around a lot of Koreans. It just so happened to be kind of like a Korean American, Korean immigrant enclave. And so I grew up around a lot of other Korean people, though, with a stark understanding that I was very different from them. And that came up all the time. Like, why was my name Italian? That was always a surprise. Why didn’t I speak Korean? Why didn’t I know any of the Korean customs? And so for me, I didn’t have that very common adoptive experience of thinking like, I’m white. I knew I was Korean, but I felt that I wasn’t. I didn’t really belong in any of the spaces that were in front of me.

JULIAN WORRICKER: At what point did you start to try and find out about your your birth family and the very beginning of your life?

OH MYO KIM: Yeah, so I have, I studied this, I’m a psychology professor, and I’m really fascinated by when adoptees start thinking about birth family. For me, it’s really been a constant on and off process. And as I got older, I would think more and more about this. But an official formal search didn’t happen until around 20 years ago. Right after college, I moved to Korea for one year and I went back to my adoption agency, which was Holt. Pretty naively thought I could just go in and search for my family. And then I very quickly realized… Now it’s been 20 years in the fight that it was going to take a really long time, even to get any information from them.

JULIAN WORRICKER: What got in the way? What stopped you from finding out what you wanted to know?

OH MYO KIM: Yeah. So when I first got there, the social worker very clearly was asking me, like, why was I here? What did I want to do? And I didn’t really know what to say. You know, I was, like, 23. I was like, I guess I want to find medical information? I was just trying to find answers for her. And she said that she didn’t have any information for me. And then a few months later, because I was living there for the year, I came, I went back at the urging of other adoptees because we always tell each other, like, ‘you have to keep going,’ ‘you have to keep asking’ because every time you get more information. So I went back and I actually luckily got a temporary social worker who accidentally read my intake form. And so then I found out, you know, they had my parents’ names. I was the fourth daughter. My parents were poor. They were going to tell everyone I died. And so I had this whole story that I had no idea about. And then at some point,
she looked at the form and realized she was reading the wrong thing. She closed the form and,
like, I never I’ve never held my file. Like most adoptees, we can’t actually see or hold our entire file because they don’t give out intake information or parental information due to what they will call privacy laws or their own policies. And so then she took the file away. And since then, I was never able to get my intake form or any other information
until actually just this year.

JULIAN WORRICKER: I mean, it taps into this notion of we want to know our own stories, don’t we? From, from the very beginning. And the appetite to do that is so strong.

OH MYO KIM: Absolutely.

JULIAN WORRICKER: And I’m fascinated in your psychological research as to what age that really kicks in the demand, the need to know origins. I suppose at a certain point in time when we’re very, very small, our origins are obvious to us. And then later perhaps we want to know the stories. But of course, some people don’t want to know those stories as well.

OH MYO KIM: Yes, yes. And I think that’s totally valid, too. And I think sometimes when people ask me about my upbringing, I feel a little bit of pressure to come up with some crazy trauma story to normalize wanting to search. And it took me a long time to realize, like, this is a fundamental human right. Like, I don’t have to perform a pain for people so that I can have a right for my identity.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Lisa Yang (?)

LISA YANG (?): Well, I’m good to talk about this new regulation in South Korea, about controlling, you know, adoption by the foreign countries. I mean, I’m not surprised at all because China just introduced that ban for adoption last August. And I understand South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world. And China is also low at 1.15, which is way below the replacement rate. And for me, it’s quite interesting that what’s happening in both China and South Korea fit into the development patterns of other countries. Once the economy develops, once women become financially independent, get a good education, they they don’t particularly want to have children. And there are practical concerns. For example, in China’s case, housing is very expensive and the husbands do not always help at house. But also fundamentally, I think is also is a case of changing attitudes.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Oh Myo Kim, do you recognize that parallel?

OH MYO KIM: Yes, I actually think I mean, we talk about it in your community; The kind of the irony that we were all sent away, you know, in the 80s, at the height, over 8000 children were sent out one year, whereas last year only 58 children were adopted outside the country. And so I am curious, because Korea has not stopped inter-country adoption. We continue it even though it’s a very low rate. But I think it’s very interesting because I live in Korea right now and I have children, and I see how precious, they’re like this precious commodity, because there’s such a push to have children. And I think about, you know, which children are precious and which are not precious. And it’s just an interesting juxtaposition.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Yeah. Can I ask? Yeah. I’m very intrigued. To what extent is finding out this information about your birth family, some of it indirectly. It’s about through some obstruction or accident. How has that changed your relationship with your parents in New Jersey?

OH MYO KIM: Oh, interesting. So, my father has passed, unfortunately.

JULIAN WORRICKER: I’m sorry.

OH MYO KIM: But for my mother, she actually just went to Korea for the first time. Because for adoptive parents during that time, you know we came on planes and so they never went to Korea. We all… If you ever see any of the photos,
you know, we were in boxes and we came over and then we met our adoptive parents at the airport. And so for my parents, they really didn’t engage that much in Korea, Korean culture. They definitely viewed me and in many ways still view me as just their daughter, just American. And they knew I was going on this journey. I mean, my mother also… They know, like right now I’m involved a lot with this activist group. We’re working on the file transfer because right now our adoption files are being transferred to a cooling storage center, remote cooling storage center, in Goyang. And we are fighting really hard for us to have a permanent archive. And that was promised. But it’s you know, it’s been two years.

JULIAN WORRICKER: I mean, that’s where I wanted to end the conversation briefly because time is tight. But you’re now looking for more transparency and a commitment to protect those birth records for people in South Korea, if at all possible.

OH MYO KIM: We want something that is safe and something that’s respectful. And the cooling center is neither, unfortunately. And we’ve been told this is temporary, but it took two years and they still have no plan. So we’re still waiting.

JULIAN WORRICKER: Well, thank you so much for coming on the program. It’s been a fascinating topic for us
to concentrate on for a few moments. Professor Oh Myo Kim from South Korea. You’re listening to Weekend from the BBC World.